I spent my twentieth birthday alone.
It seems weird to get all mopey about. I’ve spent plenty of birthdays minding my own business. But it’s now all of a sudden that I’m feeling the emptiness of it.
Twenty doesn’t really seem like it gets talked about as much as you’d think. Your sixteenth, eighteenth, sure, at least for most species. Your twenty-first even, in some places. But the age that says “hey I’ve managed to eke out an existence, to survive, in this crazy galaxy for not one, but two whole decades” kinda feels overlooked. Maybe that’s just me projecting how I’m feeling now.
It would be a lie to say I’ve totally put my past behind me. As a matter of fact, there’s not a single day that goes by where I don’t reminisce on how things used to be, people I used to know. I’d kill to have some of that old familiarity tonight. Makes me regret not being able to bring EmTee with me. There was a medic droid that could talk your ear off. Now I’m just wishing he was here to serenade me with his endless list of obscure, science-themed trivia. It’s those little quirks you end up missing the most about people. I thought being on my own would be liberating. Finally, living a life that I carved out for myself. And in a lot of ways, it is. But let me tell you, there’s nothing that feels liberating about sitting around in this hunk of cold metal, the only living soul for a hundred parsecs.
I’ve seen a lot of things, both as a Jedi and even in my short time out here in the Rim. But it still never feels like enough. I find myself wondering how I ever spent so much of my youth on just a few planets. Everything felt too slow then, but sitting here now, another year older, everything feels too fast. As a kid, adults would always opine that the older you get, the quicker life goes by. And I don’t think you truly comprehend just how right they were until it’s too late, and you’ve blinked and twenty years have already gone by. I talk as though I’m some old woman spouting even older adages, but it’s true. Even now I realize it, watching the universe come and go outside my window. It’s equal parts depressing and eye-opening, and lately I have to remind myself to step back just to take it all in.
To think: Millions of worlds. Billions, trillions of people. All passing me by in a matter of seconds. What else could I have seen? Who else could I have met? Maybe I wouldn’t be spending my birthday in this empty ship,
If I had just slowed down to watch the stars.
It seems weird to get all mopey about. I’ve spent plenty of birthdays minding my own business. But it’s now all of a sudden that I’m feeling the emptiness of it.
Twenty doesn’t really seem like it gets talked about as much as you’d think. Your sixteenth, eighteenth, sure, at least for most species. Your twenty-first even, in some places. But the age that says “hey I’ve managed to eke out an existence, to survive, in this crazy galaxy for not one, but two whole decades” kinda feels overlooked. Maybe that’s just me projecting how I’m feeling now.
It would be a lie to say I’ve totally put my past behind me. As a matter of fact, there’s not a single day that goes by where I don’t reminisce on how things used to be, people I used to know. I’d kill to have some of that old familiarity tonight. Makes me regret not being able to bring EmTee with me. There was a medic droid that could talk your ear off. Now I’m just wishing he was here to serenade me with his endless list of obscure, science-themed trivia. It’s those little quirks you end up missing the most about people. I thought being on my own would be liberating. Finally, living a life that I carved out for myself. And in a lot of ways, it is. But let me tell you, there’s nothing that feels liberating about sitting around in this hunk of cold metal, the only living soul for a hundred parsecs.
I’ve seen a lot of things, both as a Jedi and even in my short time out here in the Rim. But it still never feels like enough. I find myself wondering how I ever spent so much of my youth on just a few planets. Everything felt too slow then, but sitting here now, another year older, everything feels too fast. As a kid, adults would always opine that the older you get, the quicker life goes by. And I don’t think you truly comprehend just how right they were until it’s too late, and you’ve blinked and twenty years have already gone by. I talk as though I’m some old woman spouting even older adages, but it’s true. Even now I realize it, watching the universe come and go outside my window. It’s equal parts depressing and eye-opening, and lately I have to remind myself to step back just to take it all in.
To think: Millions of worlds. Billions, trillions of people. All passing me by in a matter of seconds. What else could I have seen? Who else could I have met? Maybe I wouldn’t be spending my birthday in this empty ship,
If I had just slowed down to watch the stars.
